Comeback
by NotFlyingWithOtters
Summary: A selection of oneshots based on that song by Redlight King from the Avengers Soundtrack.


_**So I was listening to the songs inspired by the Avengers Assemble film, and stumbled across "Comeback" by Redlight King. I hope you like (:**_

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_**Bruce Banner.**_

It was true. He shouldn't be allowed to help them, he shouldn't be involved, and he couldn't control himself. That's why he'd moved away, found somewhere he could just disappear and no one could find him. But apparently that wasn't true, apparently S.H.I.E.L.D. had been on his back the entire time, he could never ever be free. He sighed and turned his attention back to the rubble around him. The Other Guy had come out again.

God he hated The Other Guy, he couldn't even end his life because The Other Guy had plans for him it seemed. He lost everything the moment that gamma radiation had extrapolated his cells and made his personality disorder real. True. In his mind he had always been two people, someone angry at the hand life had dealt him and the quiet reserved scientist.

Now it was worse, so much worse. He sat up, wincing as pain shot through his side from his painful landing. The Other Guy might be for all intents and purposes invincible, but he was not. He was also a conscious human being. He groaned a little, the noise reverberating around the smashed in warehouse, the rubble digging into his ribs and sides, and he finally moved a little to stretch out the cramping pain in his side.

His side hurt, really hurt, it seemed the fall had knocked The Other Guy out and bruised some of Bruce's ribs. He shrugged and stepped down the pile, suddenly horribly aware of how naked he was, and that someone was watching. He hadn't been listening until the clothes were thrown at him, and then he stiffly pulled them on, trying to hide his nakedness.

"So what is it? Are you a big guy that gets all little, or a little guy that sometimes blows up large?" The voice came, and Bruce winced at the perfect description of himself, and then realised how close the lines had blurred now.

"I don't know." He said softly, buttoning the jeans that were far too big for him, leaning down to roll up the cuffs so that he could walk. The man nodded and they stood in silence for a moment, and then Bruce stepped away and out of the building, finding his shredded shirt on the floor outside the warehouse and buttoning it slowly, the tatters at the bottom brushing against his navel. He sighed as his muscle protested, finally shrinking back into his normal size. He stretched out, his back clicking in about four places, the pain intense but he was able to control it.

After a few moments, he knelt and brushed the dust and debris out of his hair, the glasses he'd been wearing cracked in the right eye. His hand shook slightly and he brushed off as much of the brick dust as he could, clearing the lenses so that he could at least see, albeit not clearly. He groaned a little, wrapping his arms around himself in an effort to warm himself – he always felt cold after he shifted into The Other Guy. He wrapped the shirt around himself slightly, shivering despite the warm sunlight on his back.

After a few moments of silence, alone in his head, he leant his back against the wall and let the heat diffuse into his body, the golden light streaming around him, calming him. He took a few deep breaths of the dusty air, ignoring the slight crackle of the motes in his lungs and began to think slowly, carefully, working through what he can remember. Natasha. He had almost killed Natasha but… The Other Guy… There had been a flicker of remembrance in his mind. He took in a few deep breaths and steepled his fingers. The Other Guy was not the person he thought it was, he was, as Stark had said, a giant green rage monster.

The Other Guy was the hulk, and there was no denying that. He was truly animal inside, but he kept up the façade of being human, of being something worthy of being loved. He was an asset to S.H.I.E.L.D. and there was no way for them to see him as Doctor Banner, no matter what they said. He sorted himself out at last, brushing a hand through his dusted, black curls, letting the motes dance in the sunbeams in front of him. Despite knowing exactly why they did glitter and twirl in front of him, he felt a smile break out on his face and then realised that that was the difference between him and The Other Guy.

Bruce Banner was the scientist, the human being; he might be sad and scared and angry because of his past. But he could take pleasure in the simple things, being talked to like a human being, being cared for and being treated normally. Take pleasure in the dancing of dust motes in the air, the smell of dust after rain – petrichor. And Bruce Banner was the man, The Other Guy may be an intrinsic part of him, but he could control it, he could be the man that he was before the radiation, better than before. He would make a comeback this time, he had to, because he had to be what the initiative had believed him to be, what Tony Stark believed him to be. The man, not the beast.

Bruce made his way back to Manhattan. Although last time he was in New York he broke Harlem, this time he would do good, would help and not hinder. Loki had tried to use him as a weapon and it had backfired; now the weapon would turn on the man that had tried to control him. Fool, you could never control a beast unless you were part of it.

He had made up his mind. He would go back. And he did, he went back to the team that had accepted him, regardless of his problem, The Other Guy. And suddenly it was so simple, to keep the rage that he always had burning at a safe level and let it go, let it consume him, own him, become the monster parents tell their children about at night.

Because they wouldn't tell their children about the monster that was The Hulk, they would tell them about the hero.

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_**I hope you liked it, drop me a review if you did :3**_


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